Answer from Dimitris:
-----Original Message-----
From: Dimitris Dimitriadis [mailto:dimitris@ontologicon.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 10:17 AM
To: Kirill Gavrylyuk
Subject: Re: Telcin discussion items
Thanks for the links
I've looked very briefly on AsmL before, I'll look into it some more.
I'm not sure I share your views below; for 2 there is no difficulty in
principle to come up with a good schema for spec guidelines requirements
(among other things), but even more importantly more advanced features,
like testable assertions, set containment of methods, hierarchy, and so
forth.
For 1, we've been using the XML DTD in DOM to "type" our spec before
generating the XHTML version that is published. Currently one can only
see strictly lexical validation, but I ascribe the semi-semantical
functionality to the surrounding framework and not only the schema
language itself.
If your email was meant for the list, feel free to forward it and this
one to the qa wg list
rest of comments inlined
On Thursday, April 18, 2002, at 06:10 , Kirill Gavrylyuk wrote:
> For the 2. - this is not done yet, but would be a useful feature. If
> we have a standard schema for xml versions of all the specs that
> reflects the spec guidelines requirements (having elements for
> assertions with unique ID, elements for sections, paragraphs and
> Conformance clause), extracting testable assertions and binding
> testsuites to the specs would be easier.
>
> For 1, here are the facts:
> The scope of XML Schema (and DTD) is lexical validation. They are not
> even type systems strictly speaking. You can not describe semantic
> constraints using schema or DTD. WGs like XML Protocol, XML Schema,
> Web Services Design Language, XQuery use schema to describe the types
> of language constructions. But not the behavior. Not every XML
> language can be described with XSD or any other schema either. Take
> XSLT for example.
>
[dd] Again, I don't share the view that behaviour simply cannot be
represented. I'm willing to commit resources to investigate this and
would certainly welcome commitment of Microsoft (and other's) time.
> Formalizing specifications
> There are number of efforts in direction of formalizing
> specifications, in order to automate analysis, generate testcases. No
> need to invent anything new. You can look at the recent work on model
> based testing, Abstract State Machine Language [1] for example. I'm
> sure there are a lot of other projects in this direction.
>
[dd] As you mention, it's one of many frameworks. I don't have the most
current situation review, so I'll come back.
> The benefit of using ASML or other techniques to formalize
> specification is that
> - you can compile and execute the spec and verify for conflicts, vague
> areas and unintended behaviors.
> - you can automatically generate models and test cases from them. I
> saw it working in real projects.
>
> The drawback is that
> - this task is heavy, sometimes harder then to create an actual
> implementation.
> - the formalized spec is less human-readable then XML Schema
> - you cannot do this without having an initial spec written in
> english.
>
[dd] The formalized spec need not necessarily be human readable, but can
be used for editor-driven authoring.
> The bottom line - providing list of testable assertions as an addendum
> to the english version of the spec is the best WG's bet from the
> cost/benefit point of view. Leave the rest to vendors, since they have
> to create specs for their products based on the W3C spec too.
>
[dd] There is something more to writing specifications that strict
cost/benefit analysis. In any case, I look forward to continue the
discussion we've started here, but especially the discussion in the Qa
(and other) WGs
> [1] http://research.microsoft.com/foundations/asml/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dimitris Dimitriadis [mailto:dimitris@ontologicon.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 5:54 AM
> To: Kirill Gavrylyuk
> Subject: Re: Telcin discussion items
>
>
> I want to investigate 1. Why is it not possible to use a schema to
> write
>
> a specification?
>
> I take 2 to be trivially true, at least in so far as the
> specifications are valid XHMTL.
>
> /Dimitris
>
> On Thursday, April 18, 2002, at 02:16 , Kirill Gavrylyuk wrote:
>
>> Hi, Dimitris!
>> Wanted to double check - is your intent to
>> 1. use schemas as language to write specifications or
>> 2. to use the same schema for the XHTML version of all the W3C specs.
>>
>> I agree with 2, I'm opposed to 1 since it's not possible.
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Dimitris Dimitriadis [mailto:dimitris@ontologicon.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 3:50 PM
>> To: www-qa-wg@w3.org
>> Subject: Telcin discussion items
>>
>>
>> QA WG,
>>
>> below please find the items for discussion I propose for my part of
>> the introduction to the Specification guidelines document:
>>
>> 1. motivation for using advanced schemata for specificaiton authoring
>> 2. benefits (better control over information extraction, normative
>> specification generation as well as automated test assertions) 3.
>> Look
>
>> at what is being done in Wg's 4. Rules for spec authoring similar to
>> pub rules that exist today
>>
>> I hope to have discussion on:
>> 1. added effort on behalf of WG's
>> 2. how to generate the normative schema(ta) to use when authoring a
>> specification 3. generalized framework for generating normative
>> (html)
>
>> versions of specifications
>>
>> /Dimitris
>>
>